


king of nothing

by Allegory



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Character Study, Gen, headcanon of how lotor met his genergals, more to come - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 02:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11958141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: He runs his fingers through his tousled hair once, twice, as his ship cuts across the pit of space. A boy upon fitful dreams, a king of an estranged ship.Lotor stands, and sets course for his next beating.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this Tumblr Post:  
> http://warmwintersun.tumblr.com/post/164787432548/radioactivesupersonic-like-yes-hello-you-dont
> 
> Prologue is a character study to get a feel for him. Actual story in the brewing.

Exile.

The word had landed on his padded shoulder like a feather. In the hallways where they once steered clear, murmuring vague greetings and formalities, they now scorned him with haughty abandon. The honored prince whose ankles had been tied to iron weights since his birth and let fly just so they could watch him fall.

All his belongings having lived in the Galra Empire for several decades he stuffed into a duffel bag. He didn’t turn back to glance at his room as he left it. The place was spotless in a dirty sort of way, dust collecting in corners, inhibited by crawling limbs of miniature size. The furniture of the room could barely remember a ghost of his touch.

Lotor left by his dropship. As a final act of defiance he detached the communicator locked into the control panel and dropped it onto the floor of the hanger, where some passers-by would notice the crunch beneath their foot and think of it as nothing more than a non-functional scrap of metal. As he launched out of the hanger it felt like he was leaving an alien planet, going off to find the home where he truly belonged.

As the days crawled and he wandered from planet to planet in curious exploration, variety of aliens spat him for the telltale purple of his skin. When he encountered Galran officers in faraway outposts, they too spat at the sight of his irises. And so with no particular place to be, Lotor found that perhaps his home had been his dropship all along. They whispered among themselves that when the time came, this heir would not rule with the fist the Galrans needed. They rejected him as king, but Lotor sees now that anyone can be king.

He is one now: a king upon a hollow throne, scepter poised over a fiefdom void of subjects.

The vast blackness welcomes him with open arms. His sleep had always been dry and uneventful, each one burdened by a cyclic nature. He found that the nights upon his exile from Galra left him strangely sentimental with dreams. Lotor dreamt of his childhood when he sat with his peers as a Galran, albeit a little lithe in stature.

Then there were the terribly fond memories of stomping into Zarkon's chambers, arguing over petty things: disloyal agents, unjust punishments- in the back of his head, the idea that a day would come upon him where his peers saw him as comrade, not half prince. The only day that came was that which the ridges of Zarkon's knuckles sailed across his cheeks, crunching frail bones that would not have yielded had he been of pure blood. It yielded.  
  
Other times it wasn't about the arguments: a conquest gone wrong and Lotor's peripheral presence seemed a portent mix to entice Zarkon's proclivities. The beatings were ruthless and cold and done in broad daylight, in front of all the Empire’s generals and advisors. He was a babe then, no more than fifteen years of age, but he always a fighter, even then. When Zarkon finished with him he gathered all the strength that Galran racism had mounted in him and spat upon the emperor's lovely face.

When Lotor wakes, he does so on the cold metallic floor. There are sleeping quarters in the upper deck that he frequented when the ship was not quite so empty. Now alone, he descends down a spiral into someplace unknown. Lotor sits up, unclasping his gauntlets. He looks at the scars upon his arms and the many battles weathered in the name of pride and health. He runs his fingers through his tousled hair once, twice, as his ship cuts across the pit of space. A boy upon fitful dreams, a king of an estranged ship.

Lotor stands, and sets course for his next beating.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re a…what?”

“Human,” she says. “Part, human.”

The two of them stand upon the dry cracked loam, the winds picking up around them. Planet Namera seems as alive as they, a being with stubborn resolution to do only one thing: blow its trespassers off into space. Between wrinkled tree stumps and pulsing veins beneath the soil like a network of cobwebs, Namera has seen not a single breathing form in centuries. Their presence is not welcome.

Still, Galrans fear nothing, and so Lotor and the woman who introduced herself as Acxa weather the brunt of the planet’s force. Their stances face the horizon and are angled at each other just slightly, perhaps an acknowledgement of each other or the threat of a challenge. There’s the vague undertone of a growl in Acxa voice: it’d be a warning but Lotor knows that the sound is nothing more than a hint to Acxa’s volatility, a weakness he could bend.

“Human,” Lotor tests the word on his own lips. There’s the carefree wistfulness of a man who has never seen war, or seen too much of it. “Curious.”

There’s a wrinkle to Acxa’s nose that signals that the topic of her heritage is sour at best. Lotor respects this: he kneels down, exposing all of his back and a possible transition into a smooth fighting stance, in order to pick up a piece of torn rope. It ends with a grapple that Lotor wraps around his fingers, sinking the blades of the grapple into his skin.

“What are you doing now?” Acxa has not met this man for more than an hour but already she fears there is something unhinged about him.

“A test, if you will.” The little hooks on the blade, designed to bite into the surface of the cliff upon the command of a button, protrudes like the talons of a cat. Lotor drops the blade but catches it again on the rope; blood trickles through minor cuts on his palm.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Would you really care to know?”

“Not terribly. Go ahead and kill yourself if you’d like- the grapple will do that for you.” Acxa walks around Lotor and stares up at the cliff, hands propped on her hips. “Hooks are poisoned. You were almost done for.”

“Anticlimactic way to die, that.” Lotor positions himself abreast.

“You’ve a penchant for the dramatic or something?”

The cliff seems to stretch to the very sky itself. Clouds circle the apex, a form that spears the planet into half. There’s that feeling again that someone’s watching them: Namera has eyes behind briar and root, in the veins underneath them. The heavy weight of the air itself promises to swallow them, all in good time.

“What’re you doing out here, anyway?” Acxa pulls a pair of gloves out of her belt and slips them onto her hands. “You’re from the mainland. I can tell from your accent.”

“Smart.”

Lotor offers nothing else. Acxa doesn’t ask. She doesn’t expect that she’ll be seeing this man in a few hours from now ever again.

“Care for me to help?"

Lotor gestures to the dropship just behind them. Acxa  _could_ climb fifty stories worth of a building or she could kick back and leave it to high spec Galran engines.

"Yeah, no. I don't accept help. Ever."

"I thought as much."

Lotor leaves. He returns to his dropship but doesn't take off. Acxa rolls her eyes and, brushing dust off her body from the first fall, begins scaling the cliff-face. Her body is quickly lost in the misty morning and with it her mind, stolen by the ongoing thought of which foot after which. Sweat beads down the corded muscles of her back, the product of hard days spent tearing through vicious terrain. To Acxa, Namera is just another beast waiting to be tamed.

But there it is, the eventual fatigue that crawls into her sinews, muscles and bones. She hisses as the atmosphere becomes denser as she climbs, pushing her down. The twinge of a headache jars her temples and she loses her grip on a jutting piece of stone. Her toes catch between a jagged edge of the cliff and she gasps, clinging on with one hand and one leg, scrambling to find purchase.

Then there is a hovering noise, and Acxa turns back to see the dropship. The windows are mirrored so she doesn't truly see it but she imagines the smirk upon Lotor's face with unnatural precision.

"Do you accept help now?"

There isn't a teasing tone to his voice. It's something more of concern, which Acxa finds hard to adjust to, and which she decides is the hallucinatory product of her exhaustion. In any case, she's not in the position to reject the offer. With the last ounce of her strength, she pounces off the cliff and onto the shuttle.

Lotor welcomes her. He catches her when the weakness renders her calves useless and she melts like a puddle, all spineless. She would defy his steady hold, but perhaps another time.

"I have the planet's readings. I knew you wouldn't make it, though the effort was admirable."

"Could've said something," Acxa breathed.

"Would you've listened?'

As if prompted, she fainted right in his arms. A night's rest after, Acxa woke to a tray of scraps. Trails of alien innards and goop. She scarfs it down like her life depended on it: it did. She's starved.

Later on, Acxa find Lotor sitting at the helm of the ship, reading charts off a hologram. He rests his chin upon the back of his hand, sharp eyes sweeping through the readings. Truth be told Acxa felt a sort of camaraderie with this man, not necessarily for the food but also for sharing her iris-bearing eyes. It was an incredibly lonely task to bear them among the racist world of the Empire.

"You are rested." Lotor doesn't take his eyes off the readings.

Acxa wanders around the ship, familiarizing herself with the various components. "It should seem. You pilot this whole ship yourself?"

"Indeed." Not at the moment. Lotoris performing some perfunctory maintenance checks and analyzing the weather predictions for the next four days. "What were you looking for up on that cliff?"

"A thrill."

That catches Lotor's attention. He slides the holograms away. "You would have died had I not been there."

"Perhaps."

And Lotor laughs. Rightly so; Acxa joins in the noise. It is a cacophony, in this ship that has been filled with a century worth of silence.

"You are free to leave as you wish, when you wish. I haven't much hospitality to spare, as you might have noticed from the meal."

"It's the best I've had in months," Acxa assures him, leaning back on the controls. "I haven't anything to pay it with."

"Consider it blood favor. Halflings stick together."

"I take no favors."

"As I've come to learn."

"Can I help you with anything?"

"No."

It is convincing. Lotor looks like he has everything under control, even though it must be considerable strain to man such a vast ship alone.

"How long will you be here?"

"As long as I am required."

"By?"

"Only time will tell."

Silence swallows them. Namera wails in the distance but Lotor and Acxa continue to watch each other, tigers circling each other. Acxa replies, "You a fucking magician or some shit? Got any real answers in you?"

Lotor cackles, white hair rustling over his un-Galran ears. "You are fair company."

"You must've been alone a long time to come to that conclusion."

"I have."

It seems a little too somber for the pomp Acxa has come to know him for. She doesn't press it any further.

"I'm looking for something out here," Lotor says. He closes his eyes and place his palms on the armrests, the visage of a sleeping king. Or the corpse of one. "What it is, I've yet to find out."

"I can find it for you."

"Good. I have tired of looking."

Acxa realizes belatedly that the whole thing seems to have been a game of words, and with this she has passed the preliminary stage. There is something about Lotor that further reminds Acxa of a woman she'd known in her life, one she can hardly be sure was hers. Controlled exertion. A mind of swords. Lotor is the sort you would bow to. She knows not of his heritage but has an inkling that he's walked many courts, as judge or criminal, she cannot tell.


	3. Chapter 3

Acxa learns more about him as the days flit by.

They have struck something of an alliance, built upon a foundation of smoke and mirrors. Lotor takes no initiative to show her around the ship, trusting her to explore it on her own accord. She finds that the ship is far, far larger than it looks externally. Over a hundred cabins can be found along the winding halls, enough to accommodate an entire fleet. There are tech rooms and science facilities that look like they’ve come straight out of the Empire’s biggest labs. It strikes her that this is not the ship of some mercenary or rogue.

She looks at Lotor different when she sees him next. Years of self-defense have poised her to study a person and make quick assessments into three categories: friendly, neutral, foe. She had seen him as a neutral figure, but now she’s less certain. The Galrans could have passed some sort of legislation to eradicate all Halflings; she wouldn’t be surprised. Lotor could be a general of some kind, working directly under the Emperor.

But as before he doesn’t hold himself like a general. Not a true one, anyway. There is the straight-backed poise, a slight upward tilt to his chin. A man above men. But there’s also how he seems to always inhibit a corner of a room. When they enter and exit the halls, he displaces himself inches from the walls, allowing the ceiling lights to cast shadows on one plane of his face. She has never caught him in any sort of leisure- even during downtimes, he appears to be analyzing hieroglyphs. The rest of the time he spends in the east wing of the ship.

Then, a spike among the monotonous days: Namera’s vicious attacks, tendrils of the pulsing roots lunging out to wrap around the ship to sink them. Lotor evades most of them with Acxa’s agile reflexes, _left_ or _right_ at the first sign of the loam’s rupture. Then there’s a shriek somewhere in the distance, the blood-curdling noise of a dying creature, that blocks Acxa’s vocal directions.

“What?” Lotor barely gets the word out when the dropship creaks, an earie sound of metal denting. Almost immediately they’re falling; the gravity safelock malfunctions for a moment and Acxa bumps her head against the windscreen. Lotor holds his ground, like he’d been prepared for them to get caught at some point. When Acxa regains her bearings, turning around with the name of the white-haired stranger on her lips, he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Lotor!” she calls out anyway. Only the ship responds, wailing under the vice grip of the tendrils.

Lotor, helmet slipped on, sprints around the ship until he gets to the ceiling exit. He pounces on the handlebars and slams the exit door open. The wind nips at his skin through even superior Galran material. With sword in hand, he begins to saw off each tendril, pulling his muscles with the sudden exertion.

Acxa joins in a moment later.

“I have things under control.” There’s strain in his voice.

He does not have everything in control. Acxa pulls her switchblade out and upon her call it extends into its full form. Instead of aiming for the never-ending tendrils she pulls a stunt that Lotor will remember her by forever: she runs off the ship, plunging in freefall.

“What are you-“ Lotor barely gets out. But she’s already billowing like paper in the wind.

Acxa has her visor on. She puts herself in a streamlined position and drops through the air like a performance diver. Lotor stills his heart- he’s exceptionally good at that- and sucks a breath through his teeth. He _sees._ And then he spins his sword into its sheath, darting back to the helm of the ship with catlike reflexes.

Lotor brings up the bottom camera. He watches as the sliver of a blade pierces the atmosphere and cuts the earth at the epicenter of the root cage. The tendrils free themselves from the ship and begin to flail wildly. They push the ship around like a ping-pong ball but soon shrivel and plummet to the ground. With full command of his ship, an extension of himself, Lotor unlatches all safety gears and dives straight down for Acxa.

He gets her back on the ship. The fall has taxed the weaker human half of her: Lotor has her in his arms a second time. This time she recovers, brushing dust off her arms, pushing her sticky bangs back. She clears her throat and rolls her shoulders like she’d planned the whole damn thing.

“You have an awful lot of trust in me,” Lotor says, a little breathless from the rush. It doesn’t show.

“In your abilities,” Acxa corrects. She doesn’t elaborate further.

It seems that they had not escaped the death trap for nothing after all. At the end of their travels is a giant gem the size of a major industrial facility. It sparkles in the sunless day. As they get closer Acxa sees that it’s not a gem but a cavern embellished with them. All around the walls of the cavern are chunks of sky blue crystal; Acxa feels a thrum against her breastbone. A pendent. That woman from her other life.

If there’s one thing she’s learned all her life, it’s not to keep her hopes up. Lotor lands the dropship outside the cavern and the two of them enter, stalagmites dripping water, accumulating in puddles on the ground.  The innards of the cavern glisten with the crystals, throwing off ample light on their path. At the end of the cave is a vast clearing with clear signs of wreckage: the parts of a ship that had crashed from some other world. Moss eats away at the rusted scraps.

Acxa’s eyes widen at the sight before her. A massive cocoon suspended in midair by a thousand threads. Something lies within, translucent behind the white curtain.

Lotor steps forward, shuffling about for a moment in search of something. His expression changes when he finds it, eyebrows arching. He withdraws his sword, stabs it into the earth and turns it like a key. A shard of light bursts from the ground- Acxa realizes that it’s the blood of a root. Lotor’s sword sinks into the ground and he looks up as the threads of the cocoon begin to unravel. A figure falls out of it, viscous like the yolk of a cracked egg.

Lotor kneels down in front of it. He pulls- eccentrically- a pink handkerchief from between plates of his armor. The figure accepts his offer, wiping its face and neck.

“The debt is paid.” Lotor ascends. The earth has spit his sword out once again and he heaves it out, wiping it against his breeches. “Narti.”

Acxa gazes at the slimed creature on the ground. It has no eyes and bears an androgynous body with a black plated chest, a long tail with reptilian markings that appears to be dead weight. Despite extensive years of travel, Acxa can say for sure that she’s never seen a creature quite like it.

“We’re leaving,” Lotor announces. Acxa finds it an affront that she’s being commanded like some lowly grunt: she may be dust in the Empire’s eyes but she’s no one’s subordinate. Almost out of spite, Acxa steps towards the creature.

That’s when Narti looks up, straight at Acxa almost as if she could sense her. There’s the crackle of energy in the distance as all of a sudden the crystals fizzle out of light, drenching the cavern in pitch darkness.

“Narti,” there’s warning in Lotor’s voice and a measure more control than usual. “We are leaving. We mean you no harm. Let us pass.”

Narti whips her tail. It comes to life quick as a bolt of lightning, burning against Acxa’s blocking arm. The pang of it sears her flesh; she relinquishes control, allowing the momentum to fling her backwards. She rolls onto the ground, cradling the burning wound with her other hand. A chilling realization sets in her bones as she tries to move her fingers: the hit has rendered that one arm useless.

Lotor sprints into the fray. He points his sword at her neck but as she rises, skin against sword point, it is Lotor who backs off. Narti steps forward and he steps back: they engage in something akin to a dance. A dangerous, deadly one. Acxa picks herself from the ground to go to his aid, but her feet are tied to the ground by the corded roots. Lavender flowers bloom from them, spiraling up her limbs. Their golden stigmas bite into her flesh and in moments she can feel toxins circulating in her blood.

Lotor appraises the scene and drops his sword, kicking it away for good measure. He stares at Narti. “Your mother is dead.”

Narti seems to consider this. It’s hard to tell what she’s feeling when there’s no upward or downward quirk to her mouth, no widening or narrowing eyes, not a line of contour on her face. She runs a warm touch along the side of Lotor’s face with her three clawed hand. The crystal chunks whisper, quiet lisping sounds that echo in their ears.

The flowers unlatch from Acxa’s skin, vines unwrapping from her ankles. She flops over, spit dribbling from her mouth. She coughs and gasps at the same time, desperate for air. Her body is in rigor mortis; the paralysis is lethal.

A drop of sweat slithers down Lotor’s temple. Acxa’s life hinges upon his silver tongue. “The Balcans are an honorable breed. I buried her corpse atop a highland, in a meadow of bunnar berries.  I had a circle of embelwood arranged around her resting place. May our Gods rest her soul.”

Narti looks away.

“She was a valiant mount, fierce beyond my aptitude. Eleven Galran fleets were destroyed.”

Narti waves her tail around, pleased by this information. She kneels down in front of Acxa and- with a choking sound- regurgitates a wrinkled flower, the wilted version of the lavender one. She crushes and grinds it between her palms and rubs it like a balm over the open wounds on Acxa’s legs. The serum seeps into her blood and within moments the effects of the poison are nulled. Acxa crawls back, scraping her elbows against the packed ground. Her shoulders tremble visibly.

The glow of the crystals grow and recede as if Narti expects Lotor to understand what it means. He catches the bare backbones of her intent, the days upon days of analyzing those curious hieroglyphs- instructions to the language of crystals, he now observes- coming to good use. But the message itself puts him at odds. He nods anyway. If he should upset her, it won’t be on the planet that her mother has practically given to her and follows her every command.


End file.
